"'The taxes in China are so heavy at present that it would be impossible to add another expense such as this would be.'
"It was not long thereafter, however, before an edict was issued commending female education, and at the present time hundreds of girls' schools have been established by private persons both in Peking and throughout the empire.
"On another occasion, while the ladies were having refreshments, the Empress Dowager requested me to come to her private apartments, and while we two were alone together, with only a eunuch standing by fanning with a large peacock-feather fan, she asked me to tell her about the church. It was apparent from the beginning of her conversation that she made no distinction between Roman Catholics and Protestants, calling them all the Chiao. I explained to her that the object of the church was the intellectual, moral, and spiritual development of the people, making them both better sons and better subjects.
"Few women are more superstitious than the Empress Dowager. Her whole life was influenced by her belief in fate, charms, good and evil spirits, gods and demons.
"When it was first proposed that she have her portrait painted for the St. Louis Exposition, she was dumfounded. After a long conversation, however, in which Mrs. Conger explained that portraits of many of the rulers of Europe would be there, including a portrait of Queen Victoria, and that such a painting would in a way counteract the false pictures of her that had gone abroad, she said that she would consult with Prince Ching about the matter. This looked very much as though it had been tabled. Not long thereafter, however, she sent word to Mrs. Conger, asking that Miss Carl be invited to come to Peking and paint her portrait.
"We all know how this portrait had to be begun on an auspicious day; how a railroad had to be built to the Foreign Office rather than have the portrait carried out on men's shoulders, as though she were dead; how she celebrated her seventieth birthday when she was sixty-nine, to defeat the gods and prevent their bringing such a calamity during the celebration as had occurred when she was sixty, when the Japanese war disturbed her festivities. On her clothes she wore the ideographs for 'Long Life and 'Happiness,' and most of the presents she gave were emblematic of some good fortune. Her palace was decorated with great plates of apples, which by a play on words mean 'Peace,' and with plates of peaches, which mean 'Longevity.' On her person she wore charms, one of which she took from her neck and placed on the neck of Mrs. Conger when she was about to leave China, saying that she hoped it might protect her during her journey across the ocean, as it had protected herself during her wanderings in 1900, and she would not allow any one to appear in her presence who had any semblance of mourning about her clothing.
"It is a well-known fact that no Manchu woman ever binds her feet, and the Empress Dowager was as much opposed to foot-binding as any other living woman. Nevertheless, she would not allow a subject to presume to suggest to her ways in which she should interfere in the social customs of the Chinese, as one of her subjects did. This lady was the wife of a Chinese minister to a foreign country, and had adopted both for herself and her daughters the most ultra style of European dress. She one day said to Her Majesty, 'The bound feet of the Chinese woman make us the laughing-stock of the world.'
"'I have heard,' said the Empress Dowager, 'that the foreigners have a custom which is not above reproach, and now since there are no outsiders here, I should like to see what the foreign ladies use in binding their waist.'
"The lady was very stout, and had the appearance of an hour-glass, and turning to her daughter, a tall and slender maiden, she said:
"'Daughter, you show Her Majesty.'